7/27/11

We are going computer for entries this year. Our building will have wifi and 2 computers for entering the info for all entries. This will be so much better than writing it all down, sending it to the office, and having some one there type it all in. We can stop the mistakes right from the start, rather than finding them two days later.

Another good thing is I got my daughter Ruth on the payroll as a department clerk. She does the work anyway. Might as well get paid. So now I will have 2 clerks, which is fantastic. So, technically, I can say now my daughter finally has a job. It only lasts a month, but that's okay. It's something.

You won't be hearing from me for a few days. We're going on our annual Park family camping trip to Priest Lake. Try to keep out of trouble while I'm gone, okay? I do not want to have to bail you out of jail when I get back.

7/23/11

Hanging out in foreign bead forums and blogs exposes me to beads and beading supplies that are not available in my own country, which, considering it's the USA kind of irks me. Why aren't our bead shops keeping up with the new stuff? Anyway, I've been waiting awhile for these to come into the US and now, finally, they have. Not locally though. I had to order them online. They arrived yesterday and oh man! They are AWESOME!!!

They are 5x16mm in size. They are expensive too, as daggers go. Prices ranged between 34 and 37 cents each. Colors and patterns are limited here in the US. For instance, no one has purple, or the checkered or square patterned ones yet. But it's a start. If you find yourself feeling the need for some dagger bling:

I'm joining. I've got a few WIPs nagging me to get done, some waiting as much as a few years for me to get off my tush. The really sad thing is it wouldn't take a whole lot of time to finish them. These are the ones I'm thinking of:

The mate to the above Blackberry Rick Sock is the first thing that came to my mind. I started these in March of 2010. The first sock went fine, but the second one not so good. I got frustrated with how awful it looked, and tossed it in a corner for an attitude adjustment.

Next is the red and white sweater for Knit Wits (February 2011). I need to sew it together. I got it all blocked in May. I took pics but never got around to posting. Usually I enjoy the finishing part of a project. For some reason, I've been dragging my feet on this one.

There's the lap afghans I need to sew together for Knit Wits too. I took this project on early in 2010. It should have been done a long time ago. I've figured out how I want to do it, I just have to sit down and --- DO IT!

Does anyone remember this one? Geez, I started it in July 2008. Molly the felted Moose.

And then there's that last pair of Entrelac mitts pattern that I was working on and got side tracked.

I have a couple non-knitted projects that really need to get done too. Like the felt applique Christmas stocking. It would be nice to have it done for Christmas.

And the Star Donut necklace. The donut is done. The necklace to hang it on is not. I started it but I don't like what I've got. I need to frog it and do something else.

Last, but not least, it sure would be nice to finally finish the counted cross stitch snowmen. I've had this one simmering for 6 years now.

Officially, I can't work on any of these until after the North Idaho Fair next month. But I'm going to commit myself to finishing them before the end of the year, in addition to the other stuff I'm working on. I can do it, I just have to apply myself.

If you, too, are interested in joining the 2011 War of WIPs, there's more info and sign-ups here:

7/20/11

It's WIP Wednesday. I guess I could have saved Mondays post for today, but what is the fun in that? How about a knitting WIP? My Chevron sweater back is coming along nicely.

The fabric has a wonderful drape to it. I attribute that to it being garter stitch, as well as the yarns qualities.

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I have some good news to share. You know that twisted triangle pendant I made last week? Well, I hadn't linked to it because the place where I found the pattern made it hard, if almost impossible, to link to. Thanks to a fellow Yahoo group Seadbeaderster member, I now have access to a pdf link of the pattern and it's translated to English! (Not in Russian like the original.) So, if you wanna try the Wavy Twisted Triangle Pendant, click the link.

7/19/11

Outside my window...
its wet. A fast and furious storm blew in and dumped on us for 15 minutes leaving half an inch of rain behind.

I am thinking...
the summer is going too quick. I wish our summers were longer here.

I am thankful for...
life, however fleeting.

From the kitchen...
Ruth has just finished doing dishes. I've got chicken marinating in a pineapple/Mango sauce. I'm planning on barbecue for dinner.

I am wearing...
a pale turquoise v-neck t-shirt with purple and yellow embroidery around the neck and some navy blue knit pants.

I am creating...
my second Flirty Fir sock. I'm doing the heel flap now. Hurray! I see the end in sight.

I am going...
into Coeur d'Alene tomorrow for my monthly blood test. Yarnies has been cancelled because Andrea moved the shop over the weekend and she wasn't sure she'd be open yet at the new location.I am reading...Murder She Knits by Vivienne Fagan. It's about a woman who loves to machine knit and murder people. It's been very entertaining so far.

I am hoping...
the wet chilly weather doesn't stick around much longer.

I am hearing..."Hip Hip Hooray!" on the tv. I've got a 1946 movie starring Vivien Leigh, Claude Rains, and Stewart Granger playing called Caesar and Cleopatra. I'm having a hard time believing they talked like that in ancient Egypt. Lol!
Around the house...
all the kids are napping, both fur and skin.

One of my favorite things...
Potatoes. It's good that my husband brought me to Idaho to live. I may have been born in Washington state, but I'm Idahoan at heart. I love potatoes. I will eat them fried, boiled, baked, roasted, blended in soup, chipped, chunked, mashed, shoe-stringed, and frapped on toast. Mmmm, potatoes.

A few plans for the rest of the week:
The blood test on Wednesday, of course. If she needs it, I'll help Andrea unpack all the yarn and put it on the shelves for her. I plan to take Ruth to see the new Harry Potter movie too, maybe on Thursday. We'll see.

7/18/11

The weekend wore me out. On Friday, and part of Saturday, I helped my friend Andrea move her yarn shop. You don't really know how much yarn is in a yarn shop until you have to pack it all up and haul it to a new location. My goodness there was a lot of it. There were 5 of us who showed up to help on Friday. I had a blast. It was so much fun, though exhausting work. I went back on Saturday to help move the furnishings. I could only help for a couple hours, but we got a lot done before I left and the whole job was finished later that day.

Saturday afternoon was a family get together. A birthday party for my nephew Brendan, who is now 16. (Where did the time go?) Nephew Tyler, who joined the army last March, was home from boot camp for the first time. It was good to see him and has shaved head.

Sunday I spent some time beading on a fair project.

This is what the beads wanted to be. I am so much happier with this idea than the original. It's an exercise in embellished netting stitch. I'm about 1/3rd done with it. If you'll remember, the gold seed beads and 4mm pearls are from the sweater that belonged to my sister-in-laws mother. The fair has a category for recycled things. I'm recycling these beads into a jewelry piece.

For the Twisted pendant, I've decided I'm going to do some tubular peyote for a necklace to hang it on. I'll enter it in the fair in the peyote stitch category.

I got 3 inches done on the leg of the second Flirty Fir sock. Yay! I think I'll have them done in time for the fair. I got a couple inches done on the summer sweater too. I worked on it at the party on Saturday.

My foot is slowly healing. I'm still hobbling, and I get pain at night, but during the day I'm having pain free periods now. Considering all the work I did Friday with the moving, I'm quite pleased with how it's doing. I did wrap it up, and babied it. I was careful about not overdoing it too.

For me, as Superintendent of Knitting, fair stuff starts next week. We're having a planning meeting. Then in August it's workin' time. I'm looking forward to it. In fact, I'm downright excited.

7/11/11

Every once in awhile I get a hankering to make something so strong I have to just do it and put everything else aside. That happened over the weekend. Oh, I got plenty of knitting done, to be sure. I've got 6 inches done on the sweater now. But there is this beading project that has been percolating in the brain for quite some time. I saw the pattern a few months ago in a Russian beading forum that I inhabit. It was pretty cool looking but I had something else going on at the time. Then, over the weekend, I happened to notice an ad for a class taught at the Bead and Button show (which I didn't go to). There was that project I'd been thinking about, only it's being taught as a very expensive class by an American (which irked me). Not by the person who wrote the free pattern I saw originally. I did some digging and found it, printed it out, and today I spent part of the day making the first half of a very interesting pendant.

It's named the Totally Twisted Triangle. It looks incredibly complicated, but it's extremely easy to make.

If you can make a peyote stitched triangle, you can make this cuz that's what it is. It is the use of different sized beads-just like Cellini spiral (or flat Cellini spiral)- that makes it twist. To finish this pendent, I will make a second triangle like the first, then weave them together at the edges so it's double sided. I'm thinking about doing the second side in a different color just for fun. Then I'll have two pendants in one.

I had a very pleasant evening last night. I had planned for a barbecue steak dinner. We ended up taking our steaks over to BIL Dan's house and having dinner with them. Afterwards we sat in their hot tub and watched the sun set. Since I'd spent quite a bit of time earlier in the day de-weeding the front yard flower beds, I really was happy to get in that tub because I was sore.

It is getting rather threatening looking outside. It's hot, muggy, not a bit of breeze blowing, and dark black clouds are rolling in. I expect a thunderstorm is gathering itself. A little storm would kind of be nice.

7/10/11

Right now the wild Clover is blooming all over the Parkarosa. I took pics of the ones growing closest to the house. The variety is astounding. These are just a few. They all have the 3 leaflet style leaves on them. But the flowers are unique for each variety. Please click on the pics to get a more detailed view.

I call this lawn clover because it grows in our lawn but technically it's White Clover (Trifolium repens).

It came with the grass seed, so I guess technically it's not wild.

This is a Least Hop Clover (Trifolium agrarium). Each plant stands straight up, 6 to 8 inches high, and the flowers are about half an inch across. Notice the leaves are thin.

This is another yellow clover. I've been unable to find it's name. At first I thought it was the same as the above yellow clover because they are living right next to each other all mixed up in the woods, but it's actually a totally different species. It's flowers are teeny tiny and much more complex in structure. Until I saw this photograph, I had no idea it was this fascinating. The leaves are much rounder. It gets to about 6 inches tall maximum but mostly it grows along the ground spreading tendrils out like a ground cover.

This is called Red Clover (Trifolium pratense), though it looks purple to me. These flowers get up to an inch in diameter and grow 2 feet tall.

I love the colors in this Pink White Clover (Trifolium repens). So bright and feminine. It stands about 12 to 18 inches tall and the flowers are about 3/4th inch across.

This is called Yellow Sweet Clover (Melilotus officinalis). It grows very tall. I've got pictures of my husband standing in a patch that grew 10 feet tall one summer, but most of the time it's between 4 and 5 feet tall.

The flowers themselves are about 4 to 6 inches long. It smells wonderful! The air is thick with a sweet and tropical odor when it's in bloom.

This is White Sweet Clover (Melilotus alba Medi). It has the same basic structure of the yellow, just a different color. This is NOT an albino of the yellow. It is it's own species. What's very interesting is that some years yellow dominates the landscape and other times white dominates it, all depending on what kind of winter and spring we have. If spring is early and a bit dry, we get lots of white Sweet Clover. If spring is cold and wet, we get lots of yellow Sweet Clover.

I hope you have enjoyed my little article on the clovers of the Parkarosa.